All achievement should be measured in human happiness.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

When all think alike, then no one is thinking

The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.

The news and the truth are not the same thing.

The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.

To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.

It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?

You are not broken. You are not a problem to be solved. Solving your “problem”, whatever you perceive your problem or problems to be, is not the key to happiness.

A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

The eye is diverted from the real business, it is caught by the spectacular action that means nothing--nothing at all.

In life we want to challenge ourselves...

Always have one artistic thing that is pure, at least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.

Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

These people are artists. These people are musicians. They're taking it out and trying to express it that way.

For better or worse, in the 21st century, reality shows are the variety show.

I would love to have been around in the Keystone Studios days.

I am damn good. I am doing all this for Egypt and nothing else. I reject 70 per cent of media interviews while these people who accuse me are running after them.